CFT 173 - Bamboo Fly Rod Building

Class Projects

This class will instruct the student in the art of bamboo fly rod building. A bamboo culm will be split, straightened, heat treated and planed into six triangular strips that are glued and turned on a lathe. The tips, ferrels, cork handle and reel seat insert and wire guides are made and silk-wrapped to the bamboo. This class has no pre-requisites and will instruct the student in a number of woodworking skills such as: form building, planning, sharpening plane blades and bench scrapers, heat treating, straightening wood, gluing with string-wrap clamping, boring and mortising, and turning on a lathe. The class has recently been expanded to a four-unit class, two mornings per week to reduce the necessity of doing work at home. The cost of the materials ranges from $135 to $250 per rod. The class can be retaken to improve skills and/or to build a variety of rod types and lengths as well as ancillary wooden fishing accessories and rod building forms.